dug up with reckless cruelty; there was the wasted bread; and there,
above all, lay the three little blackbirds, cold and dead!

I do not know how long I stood looking at the victims of my
presumptuous wilfulness; but at last I heard a footstep in the
passage, and fearing to be caught, I tore out of the house, and down
to my old seat near the holly-bush, where I flung myself on the
ground, and "wept bitterly." At last I heard the well-known sound of
some one climbing over the wall; and then the curate stood before me,
with the plant of "hen and chickens" in his hands. I jumped up, and
shrank away from him.

"Don't come near me," I cried; "the blackbirds are dead;" and I threw
myself down again.

I knew from experience that few things roused the anger of my friend
so strongly as to see or hear of animals being ill-treated. I had
never forgotten, one day when I was out with him, his wrath over a boy
who was cruelly beating a donkey; and now I felt, though I could not
see, the expression of his face, as he looked at the holly-bush and at
me, and exclaimed, "You took them!" And then added, in the low tone in
which he always spoke when angry, "And the mother-bird has been
wandering all night round this tree, seeking her little ones in vain,
not to be comforted, because they are not! Child, child! has
GOD the Father given life to His creatures for you to destroy
it in this reckless manner?"

His words cut my heart like a knife; but I was too utterly wretched
already to be much more miserable; I only lay still and moaned. At
last he took pity, and lifting me up on to his knee, endeavoured to